Die Haager Landkriegsordnung in der internationalen wissenschaftlichen Debatte uber Kriegsverbrechen im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg
In: Die Friedens-Warte: Journal of International Peace and Organization, Band 82, Heft 4, S. 65-82
ISSN: 0340-0255
Especially during World War I the Hague Regulations respecting the Laws & Customs of War on Land played an important part in the international academic debate on the punishment of violations of the laws & customs of war. Again & again academics & publicists pointed to specific rules of the regulations & most of them accepted that such violations had to be punished in court. In the interwar period violations of the written rules of the laws of war were more & more often just called "war crimes," a term which had already been used during World War I. During World War II violations of the Hague Regulations or of the Geneva Convention were not at the forefront of the debate on the punishment of the Nazi mass crimes, although almost nobody claimed that such violations should go unpunished. The debate centered mainly on the question of the punishment of violations against the unwritten laws of war referred to in the Martens Clause of the fourth Hague Convention of 1907. These crimes were finally summed up as "crimes against humanity" at a conference in London in July 1945. References.